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These are mostly collected for my own reference, so that I can quickly find them during my trip, but they may be of interest to readers as well. Inclusion of a site on this list (or on the linked maps) doesn't necessarily mean that I will visit it - some I'm just recording for reference, and my itinerary will be at least partly decided spur-of-the-moment. See also my earlier posting. I will probably continue updating this entry rather than writing new entries for additional links; but reports when I'm actually on my trip will go in new entries.

It's very easy to get into believing in "Be the change you want to see in the world." I'd really like to think that that works; I've even preached that world view to others, and today I'm a little bit ashamed of having done so. Make approaches and you will be approached. Link to others' Web logs, and others will link to yours - not the individuals you linked to, in incestuous tit-for-tat, but more generally as part of a positive-sum reputation economy where the law of attraction brings reputation from third parties to those who give it freely. As I've written before, it doesn't work. Thirteen years of my HTTP logs bear out that it doesn't matter how much you give with a Web site, it'll never mean you're allowed to expect anything. Nonetheless, I'm going to post some links here for my favourite Web logs related to books and publishing.

A reader sent me this link on "The Astrological Eris" and I thought it was quite interesting both from an astrological and mythological point of view - and it's serious, with not a fnord to be seen. I haven't done much thought or research on the astrological implications of 136199 Eris except to propose the Golden Apple as symbol; as this commentator points out, it has a very long orbit and so will appear in pretty much the same location in the charts of anyone alive today. This is a sign of the times rather than (for most of us) a personal influence. Signs of the times are important too, though, and his thoughts on envy, the connection with Chiron, and allergies, all seem interesting to me. Also, one of the religious groups I'm involved with is planning an event in honour of, among others, Ares the brother of Eris; so it is well to do the homework.

From the article:

One thing, however, that cheers me about Eris is that its difficult associations will force astrologers to take a more cautious view of the new planet's benefits. It's traditional for newly-discovered heavenly bodies to be hailed by the woolier end of the astrological community as symbols of spiritual enlightenment, universal harmony, and other New Age bromides. Even Chiron, who has one of the saddest and most pessimistically pragmatic stories in myth, full of irreversible loss and chronic pain, was seen in some quarters as the astrological poster-boy for 'healing' in the tofu-and-shamanic-drumming sense.

While looking for something else I ended up on the site of the Titanic Inquiry Project, and it's fascinating. The Titanic sank in the Spring of 1912 after colliding with an iceberg. Very much can be said about the number of lifeboats there were, whether the procedures for filling them were followed correctly, whether other aspects of preventing and responding to what happened were as they should have been, to what extent the ship's design was or wasn't right, and so on. The British and American governments each launched inquiries into the disaster, and the linked Web site carries transcripts of those inquiries, thousands of pages of them. I forgot the time and spent hours reading the transcripts when I was supposed to be doing other things.